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[Review]
It was no surprise to me that this was a delightful and exceedingly attractive collection of choral works by Gordon Getty, born in 1933, the fourth child of oil tycoon J. Paul Getty. The human voice is at the center of Getty's love of music, and he knows how to write works that are gratifying to sing as well as to hear. He is also an accomplished poet, and some of the settings here are of his own poems. Other poets include Keats, John Masefield, Edward Arlington Robinson, Lord Byron, Sara Teasdale, and Ernest Christopher Dowson. Getty's settings are always carefully attuned to texts; the music enhances the words and never seems in conflict with either their meaning or their rhythm. It is this specificity of word-setting that is an important component of the works on this disc.

Getty occupies a unique place in today's world. His music can only have been composed recently, but it is not “modern music” in the traditional sense. Although his idiom is firmly tonal and fits comfortably into an earlier choral tradition, it would be unfair to call it old-fashioned. Getty is comfortable experimenting with innovative sonorities and colors, while being firmly rooted in tonality.

Without meaning to accuse him of imitating others, because I don't believe he does, I am comfortable calling up composers who occupy a similar place on the musical landscape—Ralph Vaughan Williams, Benjamin Britten, and Nicholas Flagello. If you find their music appealing, you are likely to find Getty's equally so. His setting of Byron's “The Destruction of Sennacherib” wonderfully echoes the pulse of the poetry and also reflects the initial energy of the poem's Assyrian attack and ghostly appearance of the Angel of Death. The ethereal, dream-like atmosphere of Dowson's “Cynara” is captured perfectly, particularly in its delicate orchestral accompaniment.

The major work here is not Beauty Come Dancing, the piece that gives the disc its title, but the first track, a 16-minute setting of Getty's own text, “The Old Man in the Night.” Its companion, The Old Man in the Morning, is just over three minutes long. There is a haunting sense of reflection that runs as an undercurrent in both pieces, effectively communicated through the choral writing and hypnotic accompaniment. A nice contrast is provided by Getty's fairly traditional but still inventive setting of Shenandoah, lovingly sung by the Netherlands Radio Choir.

The performances are uniformly excellent. James Gaffigan is an American conductor whose career is growing rapidly, and rightly so. The choir and orchestra perform with commitment, a wide range of colors and atmosphere, and pinpoint intonation. Pentatone's recorded sound, heard in two-channel stereo, hits the sweet spot between clarity and warmth. Fine, helpful notes and full texts round out a terrific production. 

November 2018

[Interview]
In my prior professional life as executive director of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington (1981–1985), president of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (1985–2003), and president of the League of American Orchestras (2003–2008) I had a number of occasions to be aware of Gordon Getty as an extraordinarily generous philanthropist to musical organizations (orchestras, opera companies, music schools, etc.). On a couple of occasions I had the pleasure of meeting him, particularly in connection with a donor-cultivation event for which he generously offered his home in San Francisco on behalf of the League. What started out to be a brief conversation during which I merely intended to thank him turned into a long evening, both in his home and following at dinner at his restaurant, where I discovered his passion for vocal music, great singers, and in particular historic vocal recordings (a passion shared at that dinner by the then chairman of the NEA, Dana Gioia). That enthusiasm is evident in the music he writes, and I was pleased to accept Fanfare's assignment to interview Mr. Getty.

As I said in my introductory remarks, I was so thrilled to discover someone who shared my own love of historic vocal recordings, and singers like Ivan Kozlovsky, Fernando de Lucia, Mattia Battistini, etc. Where and when did that affinity develop for you?
It was about when my voice changed at age 12 or so. We had just moved to San Francisco. My older brother Paul and I both got the bug. We could buy originals from Caruso's time as cheaply as new releases. Björling, Pinza, Milanov, and Flagstad were still in mid-career. Our favorites included those four along with Caruso, Ponselle, McCormack, and Chaliapin from the past. We branched out from there when Tebaldi, Di Stefano, and LPs arrived a little later.

It seems to me that vocal music, the singing of the human voice, is central to your own compositions. While you have a small handful of instrumental and orchestral works, the overwhelming majority of your compositions are for voice. Why do you think that is?
I got the poetry bug too. Poetry, and prose too, are their own music. A composer adds nothing but a detachable frame. Somehow that's what I'm driven to do.

Some critics have been resistant to the conservative, mainly tonal musical style that you have exhibited from the beginning. Others (and I will admit that I am one of them) have reacted much more positively, even enthusiastically. I presume that this was not a matter of intellectual choice for you; you didn't say, “Should I write in this style or that style, with this musical grammar or that musical grammar?” I presume it was a natural outcome of your own musical sensibilities. How would you describe those sensibilities? What is truly important to you in music?
Right. I knew by the fourth grade or so that modern art and music were not for me. It seems to me that the job of art is not to reform, but to remind. We need that now.

I read the remarks in the booklet with the Beauty Come Dancing recording, where you say “I have yet to set the work of living poets, except me, because I prefer to avoid disagreement.…” Would you care to amplify that a bit? And perhaps share with us the poets whose work you really enjoy setting.
I suppose my last answer gave another reason why I haven't set living poets. I set what moves me most. But length is a criterion too. Masefield, a supreme poet, specialized in narrative verse spanning 10 to 60 pages. I haven't yet found anything of settable length by him, other than “Ballet Russe,” which is on the new recording too, that I felt I had to set.

Although there is a very strong lyrical bent in your music, there is also considerable drama. Is balancing those two elements important to you—in any one work, or in your overall output?
Absolutely. Music, with or without words, is show business. The listener must be hooked, given slack, and reeled in at the end like a fish. The composer keeps integrity, even so, by playing angler and fish at once. I have yet to meet a composer, though there must be some, who writes for the audience and success. We love both. But we compose what hooks us, and reels us in, and then take our chances with the audience.

Three of the poems that you set on this collection are by you: “The Old Man in the Night,” “The Old Man in the Morning,” and the poem that gives the disc its title: “Beauty Come Dancing.” Do you find it more difficult or less difficult to set to music your own words? In the case of these three poems, did you write the words with the original intent of setting them to music, or did the musical setting come later?
Those three poems were written first, and meant to stand alone. There was no concession to settability, although I expected to get around to that. Setting myself and others is much the same. One advantage in the first, at least in principle, is that I can tweak the lines to make the music fit. I'm not sure I've ever done this with my verse, where word choices are more critical, but I often do with my libretti.

Are there any types of musical compositions that you have not yet gotten around to but wish to (such as symphonies or concertos)? Or are you so strongly attracted to vocal music that you feel you will probably continue to focus on that idiom?
My hunch is that even if I were 50 years younger, I might never write a purely instrumental piece lasting more than 10 minutes or so. I don't put much stock in architectural key structures, say the sonata form, although Beethoven, Schubert, and some others made that work magnificently. Text gives the scaffolding to pull operas and other vocal pieces together.

What major works might you be thinking about, or working on, now?
My new opera, Goodbye Mr. Chips, is just finished. I have my eye on several poems, including one by Dowson which I rate above “Cynara.” I'm also setting more old folk songs.

Henry Fogel
November 2018

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Like wine, the quality of an artist's work is not determined by age, nor is the vigor of an audience. This was evident at Festival Napa Valley on Thursday, July 18. The day began with a book launch for 90-year-old Gordon Getty and concluded with a showcase of vocalists mostly in their 20s, with all events attended by a multigenerational audience flocking to wine country from all over this country and several continents.

The celebration of Getty's Upon a Day: Verse and Other Writings (Authority Publishing) was staged in the morning on the mezzanine of CIA at Copia in downtown Napa. Getty is best known to the festival as a longtime contributor of music and financial support, and attendees at the book event included friends and acquaintances. Upon a Day features author's notes and librettos from four of Getty's operas and lyrics from choral works and song cycles. Getty cultivates and lays out his elegantly worded lines much as the benign climate of the Napa Valley fosters carefully arrayed rows of succulent grapes.

Not long after obtaining the book and the author's autograph, folks headed down the hall to the Ecolab Theatre for a program of art songs by soprano Lisa Delan, pianist Kevin Korth, and clarinetist David Barnett.

Delan could rightly be dubbed a Renaissance woman. In addition to her singing career, she's director of Rork Music (named for Getty's mother, Ann Rork) and of the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation. For the afternoon concert's opening offering, five of Louis Spohr's Six German Songs, Delan provided new translations. Dressed in a beguiling floor-length vintage gown by Roberto Cavalli, she conveyed the drama of lieder with a richly brewed flow of sound, matching Spohr's references to a Napa-like environment of birds in trees. Korth was lucid and forthright in accompaniment. Barnett, though he may have had reed challenges, was particularly affecting in “Wiegenlied” (Cradle song), placed physically and compositionally in intimate relation to the vocalist.

Carl Loewe's Scottish Images featured clarinet and piano in a triptych of pastiches. The clarinet could have been more prominent in the matchup, perhaps with amplification.

Jake Heggie's Three Folk Songs brought enticingly unexpected voicings to familiar tunes, the composer eliciting the psychodrama in “Barb'ry Allen,” the vocalist having us perceive the perspectives of both the fated characters and the empathetic narrator. With Heggie's spare, wistful, and spot-on “He's Gone Away,” Delan demonstrated the art of singing story, commanding the room with subtle motions of head and hands. For “The Leather-Winged Bat,” she placed hands on hips and affected a colloquial vocalization, impishly partnered by Korth.

“Unlocked,” also composed by Heggie, counted both as a world premiere and the first time Delan, also a published poet, has sung her own verse. The words were difficult to make out, but the composition pleasantly evoked the music of Carlisle Floyd, ending with the accompaniment in blithe unison with the singer's vocalese and humming.

In casual conversation at the book launch, Getty had bellwethered the evening's opera concert by saying, “There'll be a slew of young singers, and they're all scary good!” He assessment was mostly right. The satisfyingly variegated program on the Festival Napa Valley Stage at the Charles Krug Winery showcased nine of the Manetti Shrem Opera Fellows in selections from Mozart to Richard Strauss to the world premiere of Getty's complete Old Man Trilogy.

An early highlight was the credibly ingenuous tenor Hongrui Ren as Rodolfo in La bohème, glowingly supported by Festival Orchestra Napa under the baton of Dana Sadava. Soprano Pelagia Pamel as Mimi was equally appealing but not as strong a singer as Ren.

The very different dynamics of Verdi's Don Carlos paired bass Atticus Rego, an earnest and vulnerable Filippo, with bass Morgan-Andrew King, a scarily imperious Inquisitore. The power play was unavoidably evocative of election-year politics.

Several of the standout singers appeared later in the concert in roles reflective of their dramatic breadth: Ren a very different lover as the Duke in Rigoletto and Rego as the titular seducer in Don Giovanni, with King as his sardonic wingman, Leporello.

Soprano Stephanie Chee and mezzo-soprano Leah Finn made for a pretty pair of songstresses in the “Sous le dôme épais” duet from Leo Delibes' Lakmé, enhanced by a huge floral projection on the back of the stage and conducted with a light touch by Zach Salsburg-Frank. The piece fitted the blithe beckoning of a Silverado evening.

The skill of stage director Alek Shrader in making use of limited space and two onstage mics worked to particularly delightful effect in “Contro un cor che accende amore” from Rossini's The Barber of Seville, in which Finn returned as a saucy, vibrant Rosina, deploying a mocking meta-approach and fine breath control. From the podium, Sadava advanced the charm and comedy skillfully.

Getty's Old Man Trilogy gathers together three similarly themed verses set to music. The piece brought to the stage Festival Napa Valley Volti Chorale and conductor Ming Luke. “The Old Man in the Morning” elicited majestic vocal harmonies over a warmly wrought foundation of strings and harp.

For the oratorio-like “The Old Man in the Night,” Getty artfully works the different sections of the chorus, as well as the orchestra's horns, woodwinds, and mallet percussion. The urgent kineticism of the strings at times evoked Verdi. Lyrics were audible and elegantly sung.

“The Old Man in the Snow” was written by Getty in 2020 in memory of his wife. It calls back affectingly to earlier parts of the triptych, with the composer's trademark eddies and clarion calls musing over a naturalistic soundscape, all coordinated empathetically by Luke. “What we who knew and saw may stay to teach,” the chorale sang, “to strangers in the speech and song of men.” Anthemic, the music raised goose bumps appropriate to the composer's sentiment and to the approaching chill of Napa dusk.

The same sort of midsummer magic summoned all nine singers back to the stage for a finale of “Make Our Garden Grow” from Leonard Bernstein's Candide. Tenor Sid Chand warmed hearts and ears in the title role, with soprano Chloe Boelter a powerfully appealing Cunegonde, their peers joining them in celebrating the splendor of life's basic imperatives. We can expect that Napa will persist in making its grapes grow and bringing us beautiful music among its vineyards in summers to come.

July 23, 2024